escaped his lips. “I love you, man. I fuckin' love you and I ... I wish that was enough. I just ... I wish that was enough.”
He didn't wait for me to reply because he knew I wouldn't. He also didn't wait for me to change my mind because he knew I wouldn't. He just rapped his knuckles against the table, where we'd shared countless dinners in Brooklyn, and then, he left.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
VINNIE
When Pops had died, I thought the world as I'd known it had fallen apart. I thought that was the absolute worst I could ever feel, the absolute lowest I could go.
But I'd been wrong.
Zach had punched me in the face, then written me off. My big brother. My best friend. My partner in crime. And he had done it to protect himself and the life he had created. I couldn't help but wonder, if he'd never gotten lucky, would he have still walked away? Would it have been so easy?
I was sure he had already told Jenna. I knew she'd already had some inkling as to what was going on, and I was sure she'd stand by him in the decision to give up on me. And why not? She was pregnant. She was carrying my brother's baby, to give him and Greyson a family. She also had her own kids, her husband, her house ...
And what did I contribute to all of that? Someone else to worry about? Someone else to take care of? It occurred to me that maybe it wasn't me who had been taking care of Pops, but the other way around. And now that he was gone, really fucking gone, who was going to take care of me now? Andy?
I sniggered at the thought. I loved Andy, truly, but I had been right about our relationship from the start. She was too good, I was too bad, and I was always destined to ruin her.
I did ruin her.
As I sat on the couch, beside the pile of coke, the door opened and in walked my wife. Looking beautiful and so much like something I never should've called mine in the first place.
“Hey,” she said cheerfully, dropping a heavy-looking garbage bag on the floor.
“What's in the bag?”
“I told you, remember? I was grabbing clothes from my parents' place.”
“Oh,” I nodded, recalling our conversation from the morning, “right.”
It was then that she noticed my face. The cut on my cheek, the blood I hadn't yet washed off, and the ugly bruise that threatened to seal my eye shut. Zach had hit me hard and the evidence of the beating, had Andy rushing to me and dropping at my side.
“Oh, my God, baby! What happened?” The nurse I'd originally known came out then, touching areas of my face with a delicate touch.
“Zach punched me.”
“What? Why?” She stood up and rushed into the bathroom, returning with a first aid kit I hadn't been aware we owned.
“To teach me a lesson.”
Her eyes jumped from me to beside the couch and I followed her widened gaze to find nothing there. When I asked, she shook her head hurriedly and insisted, as always, that she thought she'd seen a spider.
There were never any spiders.
Returning her attention to my face, she soaked a cotton ball in rubbing alcohol before dabbing at my cheek and saying, “What kind of lesson?”
“Drugs are bad.”
She stopped her ministrations and stared at me, frozen. “He knows?”
Nodding, I replied, “Yep.”
“What is he going to do about it?”
I could tell from the look in her eyes that she was worried of being caught, of being found out, and I shook my head reassuringly. “Nothin',” I said. “Well, except for cutting me outta his life.”
Her momentary relief was wiped away with heart wrenching sympathy. “Baby, I'm sorry.”
I shrugged. “Whatever.”
Andy finished tending to my wound with a few butterfly stitches and a frozen bag of peas held to my cheek. She didn't think it was broken but said that it'd look worse before it got better, and that was just fine with me. I deserved it.
Afterward, she declared we needed to get high and run away for a while. The red flags waved wildly, but what the hell was the point in listening now? So, I agreed, and then watched as she ran to her purse.
“I already opened this one, so we should finish it up,” she told me, hurrying over with a baggie that looked to be about half empty. She looked at the coffee table and asked,